Maybe not, and why not? It's good to shake things up once in a while and what better way to do it than make the shirt a more menacing, deeper shade of a colour that, according to psychologists who measure these things, is the most easy on the human eye. Rugby is first and foremost about scaring the absolute living shite out of your opponent and I don't think I'm alone when I say the sight of 15 green giants trotting onto Lansdowne Road in their erstwhile, mild-mannered and rather effete shade of green never really imbued us with the requisite levels of intimidation.

The change should also be seen as an attempt to celebrate the multicultural nature of Irish society. Perhaps it was inspired by the Nigerian flag, which is closer in hue to the new jersey than our own tricolour. Rugby, often seen as one of the more conservative of 'foreign' games and lovingly derided (albeit privately and particularly when we lose) by many 'serious' sports journalists, is in fact a shining beacon of 32-county unity and right-thinking liberalism. The change of anthem in the mid-1990s from Amhran na bhFiann to Ireland's Call set the template, even if the tune itself sucks.

I have a feeling the designers, Cantebury, called in a feng shui master to advise them on the most auspicious colour for this year's rugby world cup.

Some have a lot of belief in these things. I once worked for a newspaper in Hong Kong called Eastern Express that was established by CK Ma . . . a media tycoon who could be considered the Sir Anthony of the former British colony. Ma hired the best and brightest for his new English-language title. When after a year or so the paper failed to hit its revenue targets, the board called in a hugely respected (and expensive) feng shui master. The editor's office was moved, the clock on the wall was moved but still nothing changed. The masthead on the paper's front page was changed from red to blue. Still sales flagged. In the end the highly respected and expensive oracle opted for green.

And what happened? Sales soared and we all lived happily ever after? Not quite. The paper folded under a mountain of debt and broken dreams.

Chastened by the experience we all looked for jobs at other titles. With monochrome mastheads.

But that was then. You don't need to have a straggly beard and a PhD in the I Ching to understand that green is the colour of 2007. The Greens are in government for the first time, the environment is the world's pressing, perhaps even uniting, issue. Live Earth captured the imagination of a generation last week and the sales tax on plastic bags has risen. And everything in that sentence was true except for the Live Earth bit.

Limerick will win the All-Ireland hurling championship and, yes, Ireland will win the World Cup in their funky new shirts. Mark my words. I've read the Tao of Pooh.